Jewish Social Studies

The identification of "origins" constitutes an essential component in the creation of the nation. National memory marks a sacred point of beginning in the past that serves as a source of legitimacy and inspiration to the modern nation and emphasizes its historical continuity from that past to the present.¹ The emphasis on the idea of common descent is particularly significant because it helps reinforce the identification with a broad entity such as the modern nation.² Nations, therefore, attempt to highlight the symbolic connection to the past and cultivate the idea that past generations continue to be symbolically present among the community of the living. Contemporary members can thus relate to each other by virtue of their common descent and shared genealogical ties to their ancestors, elaborating on the model of biological kinship and the idea that the nation functions as a large family.³ The identification with ancestors, however, presents a continuing challenge to cultivate the bond between [End Page 115] members of disparate generations and make such abstract ideas as a common identity and a national community more accessible.

The use of "symbolic bridges" between the past and the present offers the possibility of constructing a commemorative narrative that appears coherent and continuous even though it is inevitably selective and involves "mental bridging" between events that can otherwise be seen as disparate points in time.⁴ The challenge of creating symbolic bridges is even greater when national memory faces periods of "regression" (such as foreign rule or dispersion to exile) that introduces a historical gap between an older national past and a modern nationalist movement. This selective dimension of national memory, expressed in the nation's preference to identify its sacred origins in a "golden age" that endows it with greater legitimacy, can be found cross-culturally.⁵ This was indeed the challenge that Zionist national memory faced, as I have discussed in greater length elsewhere, in its attempt to form a sense of continuity between the ancient national past in the Land of Israel and its modern revival, following a rupture of two thousand years in exile.⁶

The transmission of fundamental precepts of Zionist collective memory therefore constituted an important facet in the emergence of a national Hebrew culture during Israeli society's formative years from the early decades of the twentieth century to the 1950s. Hebrew educators in particular were faced with the immediate challenge of developing new educational materials in modern Hebrew that would make it easier for their students to grasp the idea of reviving a national identity—an identity that is based on a close affinity with ancestors who lived two thousand years earlier.

This article explores one of the cultural tools that modern Israeli society created in order to meet this challenge. I will focus on a genre of children's tales that were published in Hebrew textbooks and holiday anthologies for young children during the late Yishuv (pre-state) period and the first decade following the foundation of the State of Israel. While in itself the use of legends as an educational tool is not a new development—the pedagogical value of legends has long been recognized cross-culturally as well as in Jewish tradition—these tales represent a new literary trend that began in Zionist circles in Europe and continued in the Yishuv society in Palestine. The present analysis is based on 10 legendary texts written by known Hebrew writers and teachers. Typical of the nation-building era, these writers' participation in the "mnemonic socialization"⁷ of the youth stemmed from a strong sense of mission to pass on to them the unique precepts of the Zionist construction of the Jewish past.⁸ These tales were therefore [End Page 116] part of a broader attempt to create a secular national Hebrew lore that draws on traditional tales or motifs but deliberately reshapes them in line...